jaymcminn

Wonderful modeling here. Absolutely beautiful. These large-scale Italeri kits can be built up well straight from the box or can be evolved into a real masterpiece as you have done.

Beautiful build! This was one of my favorite kits, it just goes together so nicely.

I prefer, whenever possible, to attach aero parts/fender flares to the body before paint or final assembly. This allows me to use cement for a strong bond and to fettle any fit issues before paint as opposed to getting any nasty surprises during final assembly. Often add-on body parts won't have positive mounting locations on the body, which can lead to problems at the end of a build. Take, for example, the 1/12 Tamiya Datsun 240zg. The flares are separate parts and aren't the best fit to the body. Even though they're a different color on the car, I decided it was a better idea to attach them before paint and then mask and paint after the body color was applied. The result was a perfect fit and a durable joint I never have to worry about breaking.

He had two cars on display at the Revs Institute Cars and Coffee I attended last month. The attention to detail is amazing. They look handmade in the best way.

That Rover and the T.50 are must-haves. Kind of digging that Skyline too. Still wish Tamiya would release some more classic sports car kits, I know the 300SL was a big hit for them. The Aoshima BTTF DeLorean looks like a lot of the time machine stuff are separate parts... maybe a stock one is on the horizon?

And that's how you make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Just fantastic. I always love your photo backdrops with B&W pics of the 1:1. It looks like a museum display.

Incredibly clean build, great color combo, excellent photography. Awesome!

Well dang. I was getting all ready to be pedantic about Jaguars and Greg beat me to it, with my own words no less.? Seriously though, Revell has a tendency in their European offerings to leave it to the modeler to figure out what year the model actually represents. The new Porsche 911s are another example of this. It took a little detective work to determine, based off of the upholstery pattern and steering wheel, that it is specifically a 1984 car.

Just checking on the cat food supply...

This is borderline silly. Next they'll be selling mini air fresheners for your interiors.

Thanks! I kept the weathering very subtle. I wanted to get the look of a well-maintained weekend toy.

I imagine the engineers at Tamiya taking a look at Pocher kits and saying "yeah, but what if it all fit?" when they were developing this kit. I love Caterhams but can't even imagine driving one on the roads on this side of the pond. My 95 Miata is a lot bigger than a Caterham 7 and I feel invisible while I'm driving it!

As a veteran of two EM Daytona builds, I know what's involved in getting one of these across the finish line. You got yours across in style. Great work, it's a beauty!

That is an excellent color for a Stratos. Beautiful build!

Thanks Mario! Just phone pics with my Google Pixel 6 and the lighting rig I usually use with my DSLR. One thing I just noticed is lots of fingerprints on the aluminum bits... she's going to a show in Largo FL this weekend and I'm definitely gonna have to polish those out!

This is Tamiya's 1/12 scale Caterham Super Seven BDR. For those who aren't familiar, the Caterham 7 is a continuation of the Lotus 7, which was originally introduced as an easily buildable kit car by Colin Chapman in 1957. When Chapman discontinued production of the 7 in 1972, Caterham bought the rights and the 7 has been in production ever since, continuously being updated and modernized. The 7 is built of aluminum panels over a steel tube frame with fiberglass fenders and nose cone. The Tamiya kit represents an early 90s "BDR" featuring a Cosworth-tuned 1.7 litre Ford engine producing 150 horsepower, more than sufficient to properly motivate a car weighing roughly half a ton. The Tamiya kit is breathtaking. The entire body is made of aluminum except for the plastic nose and fenders. About 90% of the assembly is done with hundreds of screws and bolts. The attention to detail is excellent, and it looks fantastic when done. I decided early on to show some, but not all, of the bare aluminum panels and decided on Splash Paints Bentley Racing Green for the main body color. The tip of the nose cone is Tamiya Camel Yellow. The interior is Tamiya Dull red. The chrome plated metal exhaust was airbrushed with Tamiya clears and Vallejo Metal Color with Tamiya Weathering Master soot at the tip. Interior carpet is provided by Tamiya as pre-cut self-adhesive pieces and the seat belts are the pre-printed fabric kit pieces. Kit details like the K&N-branded air filters and soldered front grille piece really help sell the realism of the finished model. The only major addition I made to the kit was the wind deflectors which I scratched from clear styrene and aluminum sheet. They add a great finishing touch. The number plates are a nod to the most famous Lotus 7, the car Patrick McGoohan drove in "The Prisoner". His was KAR 120C... since mine is a later car in a Prisoner-inspired color scheme I went with KAR 120D. This was a fantastic build with some minor frustrations, mostly due to fitting tiny screws into tight places that would be a bit of a faff on a 1:1 Caterham. The final result is an excellent model that lives up to its reputation as one of Tamiya's best! Anyway, enough talking... on to the pics!

That is really beautiful. Hope mine turns out half this good!

I have built several of the 1/12 scale 70s Tamiya kits. For their age they're absolutely wonderful. Out of the box they're good, with some TLC and detail work they can be superlative. This is the Porsche 934. Probably 90% out-of-box. The Datsun 240zg. The Lotus 72... wish I had some better pics handy. Be prepared for some weirdness... Tamiya was overly fond of molding interior parts as well as some trim parts in a soft black vinyl. Sometimes the working features , umm, don't. Many of these kits have been reissued frequently and later issues include additional PE and detail parts. Additionally, newer Tamiya decals are vastly superior to the old ones.

I can point out all the flaws in every single model I complete. Some have won contests. One was recently an MCM cover car. I can name all the near misses that almost got some put back in the box, all the slightly dodgy fixes, every dust speck and wire that gets tucked in under something because I just can't figure out where it goes. But because these things are imperfect, and that I was able through occasional cleverness and frequent blind luck to turn them into models that I am proud to display and show to others, they are special to me. What's funny is that once I get some distance from a build, the memory of those flaws diminishes but the pride in my work doesn't. If perfection stands in the way of a builder expressing his creativity and talent and hopefully sharing it with others it's highly overrated.

Absolutely beautiful rendition of the Caracciola coupe. Those Jo-Han Mercedes are some of the best classic car kits ever produced. I built the Special Roadster a few years back and was blown away by how well-engineered these kits are.

Naples got lucky with Ian. Coastal areas got hit and the Pier was wrecked, but for the most part the town came through okay. Further inland there was little to no damage- I lost power at my house 5 miles inland for a grand total of 10 hours. Ft.Myers Beach is a wreck, and will be rebuilt in a totally different way. A lot of the people who lost their houses there won't be able to afford to rebuild to the new codes and many of the people whose houses are repairable won't be able to afford the ridiculous insurance rates going forward. Agreed that Revs is an incredible museum. There are definitely larger collections out there but Revs is really distinctive for its collection of significant and beautiful cars as well as its dedication to preserving rather than over-the-top restoring them.

Allowed and encouraged. Revs more or less requires tickets to be purchased in advance to limit the number of people in the museum at any given time. If you're used to auto museums with cars behind velvet ropes and barriers Revs will be a bit of a shock... no ropes, no barriers. Of course you can't get in the cars and make "vroom vroom" noises, but you can get fantastic pictures from all angles. It's really the best auto museum you've never heard of!

Meguiar's Ultimate is fantastic, as well as being readily available. The compound and polish are basically magic. I use them on my 1:1 cars as well as my models... if I get a decent final finish on my paint I can work out any minor texture without resorting to sandpaper or polishing cloths. Plus the compound and polish don't leave any residue, so if you need to reshoot clear coat you don't have to worry about fisheyes or other paint issues.

Italeri Ferrari 275GTB. My LHS acquired a nice collection of vintage kits several years ago and they had this really rare kit priced at $39.00. I jumped on it, as well as a Fujimi Enthusiast Dino and Porsche 911 Turbo for about the same price. Online pic below, I'm trapped under a napping cat on the couch and don't dare disturb him to take a picture of the one in my stash!

This is the 1/12 scale Caterham BDR by Tamiya. I've had my eye on this kit since it came out back in the 90s and got a great deal on a sealed kit on eBay a month or so ago. It is an unusual kit for Tamiya and they've never made anything else quite like it. This kit was apparently a passion project for the Tamiya engineers. They wanted to create something that was as close as possible to the experience of building a 1:1 Caterham (appropriate as the Super Seven is available as a kit), so it goes together much the same way as the real thing. Real aluminum panels are screwed to the tube frame. The working suspension is then assembled to the tub, at which point the interior and engine are fitted. It's an impressive kit, beautifully engineered and impressively packaged. I decided to create a bit of an homage to the Lotus 7 from "The Prisoner" while still showing some of the bare aluminum panels. I decided to paint the aluminum hood and cowl as well as the fenders and nose cone in Splash Paints Bentley Racing Green Metallic. Rather than painting the whole nose cone yellow as the Prisoner car was, I went with a thin yellow stripe in Tamiya Camel Yellow. The painted parts after clear and polishing... Next I started on the complex front and rear suspension. The working shocks are pretty much standard Tamiya fare. The suspension arms are cast metal for additional strength. Everything goes together with tiny screws/bolts. The screwdriver Tamiya provides is excellent compared with most screwdrivers you get in a model kit, and I stuck a small neodymium magnet to it to magnetize it so it will hold the screws in place. The front suspension was incredibly fiddly as a lot of the mounting points are inside the tub and would be a bit of a challenge to get to on the 1:1! Bare frame... Front suspension in situ... The rear suspension is just as complex as the front but easier to mount up. The paint on the brake discs is Vallejo Metal Air Chrome. As chrome paint it's not great but it's excellent for a polished/shiny metal surface. Next up is the rollbar, which is chromed metal. The metal boot floor goes in now as well. These shots also give a sneak peek of the Dull Red interior color, which really pops against the green. That's where we stand now... more updates soon!